Following its first edition in 2007, Talkover/Handover 2.0 continues to generate critical dialogues and creative works so as to review the changes in Hong Kong’s social and cultural landscape since 1997. Calling and polling for discussion topics in early March online have generated myriad topics among which a top 5 have been nominated by the public: ‘Localism,’ Sustainable Development of Independent Artists-run Space, Art Labour, Art in Politically Sensitive Era, and Censorship. Further to the polling, the open call for proposals resonating with the selected topics has come up with 5 working projects. In May and June, participating artists of Talkover/Handover 2.0 have conducted a series of public discussions and workshops so as to foster public dialogue and participation. The exhibition at 1a space is an accumulation of the working group‘s as well as participating artists’ research. The creative input will inform further research on Hong Kong art development in the post-Handover times and invite more dialogues on where we are standing and how we can possibly make a difference.

On the 10th anniversary of the Handover, Talkover/Handover – Dialogues on Hong Kong Art 10 years after 1997 took place as a research and creative initiative co-presented by Asia Art Archive and 1a space. Part of the research led to an exhibition of the same title in July 2007, where artists exhibited their individual or collaborative works as a result of their dialogues on post-97 Hong Kong art.

Implementation report – Floating Projects Art production site experiments how an art space would survive without rental sponsorship during the exhibition period and looks into different modes of operation. The Collective will share their experience of conducting this experiment regardless of the outcome, and open up discussion on the condition of independent art spaces in Hong Kong.

Floating Projects was founded in 2010 and reinvented in 2015 by artist Linda C.H. Lai in collaboration with a dozen of emerging artists (the Floating Projects Collective). It is a ‘site of artistic production’ located in a ‘vacant’ 170m2 industrial space in Wong Chuk Hang. Being curious and venturesome, the Floating Projects Collective is aspired to challenge the notion of white-cube art space, and to explore what artists can specifically do nowadays under the institutional and physical constraints in Hong Kong and the art scene.

Draw my Mom, Draw my Dad: My Mom and Dad Gave Birth to the Local, explores how art can connect with the land and local concerns. Ten years ago, Kith took part in Talkover/Handover. He is participating again with the hope of reviewing his role in art in the past ten years.

Tsang Tak Ping, Kith is a life practitioner doing education, farming, visual art, design, curation and art and design criticism. He is the co-founder of Para/Site Art Space (1996) to promote community arts and Sangwoodgoon Farm (2011) to promote Permaculture. He is a volunteer in School of Everyday Life to promote art and culture, life education and environment education.

123 originates from a strange voice yelling ‘one, two, three’, which the artist chanced upon while testing a set of cheap electronic sound recording devices bought by her friend from Taobao. The accidental discovery of the voice connected a series of coincidental materials, all of which are put together by time to form a kind of script. The resulting video installation connects the sound and image trajectories of different life experiences.

Law Yuk Mui graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Master of Fine Arts. Using image and sound as her mediums of preference, and adopting the methodology of field study, she often intervenes in the mundane space and daily life of the city and catches the physical traces, psychological pathways and the marks of time—formed by the interaction between space and living beings. Mui often digs beyond the surface, through which she would recover fragments of narratives and micro histories.

嚴瑞芳 Yim Sui Fong × 政治敏感時代的藝術 Art in Politically Sensitive Era

作品用聲音及行動表演作為面對敏感政治環境的回應，以「跌倒的人」及「鴿子」比喻社會上小眾，由此思考今天在夾縫中生存及發聲的方法。

The ‘fallen people’ and pigeons are minorities in the society. By using an analogy of them in a sound and video installation as well as a participatory performance, Sui Fong will reflect upon our means of survival and voicing out in difficult times.

Yim Sui Fong’s practice in mixed media, writing and performative action engages the broader public sphere through exploring the gap, the interpretation and a sense of gravity among human communications: how people relate themselves with others by re-telling the history and memory, her practice looks into spaces between fiction and history, bodily and emotional memory, and time and journey.

The Artisan Brewery Project aims to engage artists in beer brewing so as to fully utilize their studio spaces. By turning storage or a corner into micro-brewery, the artists hope to serve their beer at opening receptions of exhibitions, and in the long run to produce an Artisan brand of craft beer to be sold to galleries.

Zoie Yung has become an art and wine pairing connoisseur after working in gallery, auction house and her own independent art space in Guangzhou. She co-founded ‘openingwine.com’ with some friends, a group for reviewing art exhibitions by wine tasting. Lo Lai Lai’s works oftentimes mediate on the notion of traveling, the nature and ecology, and her practice of farming in Sangwoodgoon has also given her new insights into food and life. Since having food allergy to a specific brand of beer, Lai Lai has gained enthusiasm and started her own beer brewery.

香港藝術研究組於2017年5月至9月為亞洲藝術文獻庫駐場研究組，參考夏碧泉的文獻資料，為〈廿年回歸前後話〉舉行一系列的討論和工作坊。

As researchers-in-residence at Asia Art Archive from May to September 2017, Hong Kong Art Research Initiative activates the Ha Bik Chuen Archive as a resource that informs discussions and workshops of ‘Talkover/Handover 2.0’